Social Media within the collecting community

For the last few years Social Media has taken off in the world. It use to be only about celebrities or athletes, but now anything and everything has turned to using some sort of Social Media.
For our community of collectors it's no different. Social Media has grown to such an extent over the last year that card companies and hobby producers alike are hitting the social media scene in rapid proportion.
The reasoning is simple, you can reach out to millions of people with a single Facebook Post or Twitter Tweet (and those are only the two most used tools within the Social Media universe).

As you know we as The Pack Gambler use Facebook and Twitter as a means to reach out to our followers and our hobby community to provide reviews, news and Gambler Giveaways. This has been one of the most influential ways for us to interact with our community. This is also one of the most important ways for the big card companies to do so as well. Anywhere from advertising new products, contests, sales and future developing products are showing up daily. It is very smart business to invest resources into this market and makes a lot of sense for the companies to promote through.

Card Manufacturing customer service has also been involved into Social Media to handle some public relation details and again has done wonders for quick responses. Of course with putting yourself out there in the public eye sometimes things can be scrutinized and given backlash by non-supporters or even people demanding more as a customer. It's challenging for companies to do this, but as times change more into the Social Media world everyone will have to adapt.

For any collector not in tune with Social Media they could be potentially missing out on the way the community direction is heading. With the decline of card shows throughout North America, collectors have needed to find other ways to fill their collection needs and Social Media does that. A single Tweet or Post on Facebook by a collector looking for or selling/trading certain cards can again reach out to the masses. This in turn provides a number of possibilities of finding what you want.

Going forward Social Media is only going to get bigger and more mainstream as a way to run business and the hobby community. The possibilities are endless and we're looking forward on things to come.